


Love was kind for a time

by waferkya



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day they see each other again is not a good day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love was kind for a time

The day they see each other again is not a good day. Bastian is forty-two years old; good days are awfully rare, now.

Lukas, on the other hand, is the same as always: the cocky happy kid who’s never seen a rainy day in his life. He looks good, too good even; some people get that, Bastian thinks. Some people get a skin they’re comfortable in, no matter where you put them; no matter what they do; no matter what they can’t do.

It would be hard, Bastian also thinks, not to feel good, and extremely smug, about being Lukas. Lukas is handsome in that symmetrical, boyish way that will never fade; he has aged very well—that is, he hasn’t aged at all: the laugh lines bracketing his smiling lips are barely visibile, and that’s the only change he’s gone through. He still holds himself the same way he always has; he still has the terrible fashion sense; he still grins all the time; he’s still Lukas, Prinz Poldi, the cheeky bastard who got what everybody wants: he’s gorgeous, and he never had to grow up.

What the fuck is not to like about being Lukas?

Bastian knows that he’s being unfair, but he can’t bring himself to care. Today is not a good day, this week was not a good week—this life, he thinks sometimes when he’s home alone and it’s dark outside and everywhere, is not a good life anymore,—and now Lukas is here, looking like that. Grinning like that.

Bastian wants to break that perfect mouth.

“Hey,” Lukas says, and he still walks like the beloved son of Koln who can’t take two steps without someone he never met before coming up to him and slapping his shoulder and making small talk. “Good win.”

Bastian lets out a strangled laugh, with no humor to it. “It was a shit game,” he says, and he grabs Lukas’ hand and lets himself be pulled into a one-armed half hug. Lukas’ body is warm, firm the way Bastian remembers. For a split second, he feels murderous.

Lukas takes half a step back, and makes a skeptical sound. “Naw, it wasn’t that bad. Don’t be a killjoy.”

He looks at Bastian like he’s trying to take his measurements, as if he could catch up on the years they’ve spent apart just standing there, being pretty, and staring.

Bastian shakes his head.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, not too unkindly—at least, he thinks he’s talked to Lukas in much harsher tones in the past. He buries his hands in his pockets and stares at the shiny tips of his shoes. “Why are you here anyway?”

Lukas doesn’t even blink; his smile doesn’t shake; Bastian is shut down to him like a turtle slipping into its shell, and it all goes wonderfully lost on Lukas.

“What do you think?” he says, and he raises his hand like he’s going to throw a friendly punch to Bastian’s shoulder, but thinks about it again and clenches his fingers mid-air, drops the arm back down. Bastian almost says, _good choice_. “I’m here to see my favourite manager in the world.”

Bastian shakes his head and gives him a tight-lipped smile. “The word is coach.”

“Coach, yeah, whatever,” Lukas rolls his eyes, still grinning.

Bastian could make a joke, now—he could pretend he doesn’t know exactly what Lukas meant, he could fake a clueless face and tell him he doesn’t think Messina is still in the arena, but they can go look for him if he wants. That’s what old, no, _young_ Bastian would’ve done; be a dick, just for the sake of it; jest around with Lukas, tell questionable jokes and make up horrible puns, just to make Lukas laugh.

But there’s a headache licking at the place on the back of his skull that never really stops throbbing, and it’s been a long fucking game in a long fucking day in a long fucking week, so Bastian rubs the root of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and says, “Fine, okay, you can buy me lunch.”

Lukas’ smile is so bright it could kill a man with a hangover.

 

“I think you’re too hard on them,” Lukas says, as quiet as he can get, which is not much, but it’s something. They’re at a pub that smells like greasy meat and thick beer even at two in the afternoon; they’re sitting in a corner booth next to a big one-way window looking out on the sidewalk and Lukas says, “You’re too hard on yourself too.”

Bastian never asked for his opinion, thank you very much; he’s a grown-ass man, however, and polite, so he shrugs off the childish pang of annoyance and says, “There’s no such thing as too hard.”

Lukas laughs, which is unexpected. He fishes a french fry from his plate and points with it at Bastian’s face.

“See? That’s exactly the definition of being too hard.”

For the first time, Bastian looks down at their food—his chicken salad, his cup of fresh fruit, mostly untouched; Lukas’ double cheeseburger; Lukas’ fries swimming in a weird pink sauce; Lukas’ extra serving of fries; Lukas’ three leaves of lettuce he scrupolously piled in a corner of his plate and never looked at again.

Bastian wrinkles his nose.

“Should you really eat that?”

Lukas pauses, his mouth open and the fry halfway to it.

“What?” he says. “I don’t play anymore, I eat what I want.”

Bastian doesn’t play anymore either, and he still doesn’t eat like that. He doesn’t say anything, but really, he doesn’t have to; Lukas sees straight through him and, unsurprisingly, his grin is turning mischievous.

“Go on, help yourself,” he says, pushing the plate towards the center of the table; towards Bastian.

Bastian coughs and straightens his jacket. He glances out of the window and asks, in his best professional voice, “Did you enjoy the game?”

Lukas doesn’t miss a beat.

“I’ll tell you if you eat some fries.” Bastian presses his lips to a tight line and Lukas pushes the plate again; it hits the glass bowl of Bastian’s salad, making a bright ringing noise. “C’mon. Please?”

“Thanks, I’m fine.”

“Jesus, Basti,” Lukas huffs, poking the fluffy bun on top of his cheeseburger. “Unwind a little, yeah?”

Bastian snorts. _Unwind_. That sounds like a word from another life; unwind and have fun and stop thinking so much, these are all things he’s long forgotten how to do.

He used to think that growing up—growing older—was all about making progress, smoothing the rough edges of one’s personality to fit in better, and learning, learning so much—in order to get perfect. He used to think that and now he knows that you can be an adult and still know nothing; now he knows there’s no application to adulthood; now he knows that there’s no requirements.

You become an adult, because you can’t do otherwise, but it doesn’t have to be anything; you can get old without learning anything. You can get old without changing. You can be Lukas.

Bastian shut that door behind him a long time ago.

“C’mon,” Lukas says. “Just one fry. It’s not gonna kill you, Schweini, I promise.”

The only reason Bastian doesn’t flinch is because he knows this was coming; he’s been bracing himself since he got a glimpse of Lukas’ blinding smile on the other side of the court three hours ago. He knew he would say that, because Lukas always does: Lukas, like a child, doesn’t know his words have a weight.

Bastian, the responsible adult, closes his eyes for a moment.

“You won’t stop pestering me about this, right?” he says; Lukas’ grin is smug and he shakes his head. “Very well.”

_I’m not indulging him because he called me that_ , Bastian thinks, and he reaches out to the fries. It’s simply a matter of convenience.

Something softens around the corners of Lukas’ lips, and suddenly, Bastian is reminded of the time when no one, not even Tobias, knew him better than Lukas.

He’d like to think those days are over, but as he bites into the fry and a bit of sauce trickles down his chin, he’s starting to think that maybe they’re not.

 

So, he’s drunk. He has every right to be, seriously, the next game is scheduled for—for—he can’t remember, okay, he’s drunk, but sure as hell they’re not playing tomorrow, or the day after that. He is absocertainly lute of that. Yeah. Absocertainly lute. That’s right.

“Poldi,” he calls in a thin whiny voice that makes him giggle; Lukas giggles too, somewhere on his left, and Bastian shifts on the couch, trying to reach that sound. He likes that sound.

His elbow slips from under him, and he faceplants onto Lukas’ thigh, but it doesn’t really hurt; besides, Lukas is laughing again, rubbing his fingers to the short hair on the back of Bastian’s neck.

“Biting knees is against the rules,” Lukas tells him, fondly. Bastian mumbles into the soft fabric of his jeans, and then he twists and fumbles and finally gets settled, belly up, his head in Lukas’ lap.

He reaches out, trying to touch Lukas’ face.

“You,” he says, his tongue like a thick, clumsy thing in his mouth. “Don’t look drunk.”

He finds Lukas’ face, finally, and spreads his fingers all over it, crawling. Lukas laughs, and doesn’t bat his hand away, but he tips his head so he doesn’t get poked in an eye.

“I never look drunk, do I?” he says. “Even when I’m drunk.”

Bastian pulls his eyebrows together, trying to make sense of what he just heard; his thumb somehow ends up touching the seam of Lukas’ lips, soft and warm and pink, and he doesn’t move it.

“Okay,” he whispers, and he forgot what he was thinking a second ago, because the only thing he cares about right now is Lukas’ mouth, and the fact that it is not on his; it hasn’t been for a very long time; a very criminally long time. “Okay.”

“Yeah?” Lukas rasps, and he’s leaning down so Bastian, who’s still in his shirt and tie but lost the jacket hours ago, together with his frown and his worries and the past ten years of his life, Bastian lifts his head a little.

He kisses Lukas with his thumb in the way, but he feels Lukas’ lips curl up in a smile.

Lukas doesn’t call him Schweini again; he doesn’t have to.

 

The day he finds himself waking up to a tangle of warm blankets and legs, Lukas’ arm thrown over his waist and his stubbly chin fitted into the curve of his neck, for the first time in a long time Bastian doesn’t want to get out of bed. He’s not anxious to go meet the world and be better than what he was yesterday; Christ, he’s not even sure what day it is, and he doesn’t care.

He’s worried about that, of course; he slipped back into his old skin— _Schweini_ —back to old habits he’d thought he’d buried for good, with unexpected ease; as if that is exactly what he was meant to do; and it can’t be.

He bought a house, in the mean time. He got married, he won everything, he lost some things, he had a daughter; he got divorced; he broke his elbow once, and his hand twice, and he played through countless minor injuries and aches, just like a good little football soldier; they called him captain for a very long time, and he didn’t always felt like he deserved it, but when he left football he got a big, proper celebration, the fans spelling his name on the stands of the Allianz with white and red pieces of paper, singing, forever grateful; he got fireworks, and he rolled in confetti on the grass with his daughter and that was his last childish moment; he got his basketball coach license faster than anyone’d imagined he would; his life has been moving forward, sideways sometimes, sometimes spinning, but it never stood still.

Except in this.

This, apparently, hasn’t changed. The golden weight of Lukas sleeping on his shoulder is simply not something Bastian can bring himself to grow out of love with.

He feels trapped and tricked because he fell into this when he was so young—when he was such an _idiot_ —and it seems unfair; he doesn’t like the thought of it, but he likes _it_ ; he likes that he can run his hand up Lukas’ back even now, as old as he is, and still feel the same as he did back then.

“Shut up,” Lukas mumbles, burying his face into Bastian’s shoulder. “They can hear you thinking from space.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Bastian tells him, ever petulant. Lukas retaliates brilliantly by biting him; Bastian laughs, ignores his outraged yelp when he rolls on top of him, and there’s not a single thought or doubt in his head when he kisses the breath out of Lukas.

_That_ , he decides, later, _is the key to a good day._  


**Author's Note:**

> Yeah Basti I'm scared of growing up too. *sigh*
> 
> The basketball coach thing is totally self-indulgent, yes, but Basti actually loves it and he goes to a ton of Bayern's games even though the team is not exactly top quality and in 2011 there was even some scheme to have him _actually play_ basketball to get more people interested (yes I have feared for my life because of that), so.


End file.
